As described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,393,417 issued to Patrick Y. De Le fevre on May 21, 2002 and incorporated herein by reference, a method is described for providing a rapid internet search involving the use of a fingerprint of information associated with a request made by an individual. The fingerprint is forwarded to a library that locates information related to the fingerprint from information submitted as a fingerprint by entrants who enter their data in accordance with a specialized master plan and format.
While the internet search method described in the above-identified patent is exceedingly useful for providing rapid targeted searching, there is a requirement for those either not skilled in the use of computers or even those not able to type in requests to be able to search the internet by navigating through a master plan-defined series of parameters so as to be able to generate appropriate fingerprint requests.
The requirement for an audio-visual presentation scheme for such a targeted internet search method revolves around providing individuals who may not be computer-literate or may not be literate at all with a non-verbal mechanism for getting targeted information. While most internet search methods require the entry of data into fields, this method of searching leaves out a large number of individuals who are either intimidated by the search method or who are unable to utilize it due to a lack of facility in the particular language.
For instance, in underdeveloped countries there may be no ability at all to utilize current text-based internet search methods such as the case presently with the Middle Eastern countries in which less than 2% of the households are capable of searching the internet and in which Arabic does not use a 26-character alphabet. Note, Arabic language difficulties may provide a problem in terms of input devices for a system that was generally conceived for English and the Romance Languages using alpha-numeric characters. Also important are other individuals whose natural language does not have such an alphabet, such as Chinese and Japanese where the written form of the language includes a large number of characters, often exceeding 3,000.
Thus in order for the maximum number of individuals to be able to utilize an internet search method and to be able to converge on an item or items they desire, one needs to be able to provide a system which is independent of the particular written language of the individual. The result of opening up the internet to a non-textual universe of users is indeed quite important to the universal utilization of the internet. Moreover, since key word searching and the like are used in textual-based searches to obtain information, it is therefore thought necessary to provide a non-textual basis for targeted searching so that even if the individual is not familiar with either computer language or the particular textual language involved, the individual many nonetheless provide himself or herself with specific desired information.